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“THE SEA FRYSETH NOT”: SCIENCE AND THE OPEN POLAR SEA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHRISTOPHER CARTER

Guilford College

Greensboro, NC 27410 jcarter3@guilford.edu

Earth Sciences History Vol. 32 No.2, 2013

pp. 235–251

ABSTRACT

While generally dismissed by historians as a romantic fantasy, the theory of an open polar sea fit into the context of a more unified view of the natural world developed in the early nineteenth century and exemplified by romantic philosophical ideas. Oersted’s discovery of electromagnetism encouraged research into the possible connections between electricity, magnetism, heat and light. At the same time, there was renewed interest in geomagnetism inspired by Hansteen’s revival of the four-pole theory of the Earth’s magnetic field. Incorporating these works into a new theory of climate created a space for an ice-free Arctic by allowing a milder climate in the high latitudes. This attempt to fuse the study of meteorology and geomagnetism reinforced existing beliefs in an open polar sea and placed this sailor’s dream into a holistic worldview that joined different natural phenomena in an effort to find one unifying principle behind all of nature.

1. INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the shrinking of the northern ice cap has become more pronounced, opening the long sought-after Northwest and Northeast passages to Asia. In the nineteenth century, however, the belief in an ice-free polar sea was common among Arctic explorers as well as the general public. Mary Shelley began her 1818 novel Frankenstein with a letter from a sailor seeking a passage to the North Pacific “through the seas which surround the pole” (Shelley 1963, p. 16). Later Jules Verne wrote about Queen Island, which lay less than a minute of latitude from the Pole surrounded by an open sea (Verne 1876). As the century progressed, sailors made their way farther north in search of this open water. Returning from his Arctic quest for Sir John Franklin in 1852, Edward Inglefield wrote to Lady Franklin reporting his progress. “I entered Smith Sound and the Polar Basin, reaching within 11½ degrees of the Pole. A gale from the North blew me out otherwise had ice permitted I should have been well on to Behrings Straits ere this”.1 Writing to John Barrow, he confirmed that he had “no doubt in my own mind” that he had entered the Polar Sea and found “open water far far [sic] as the eye could reach”.2 From the Admiralty, Francis Beaufort excitedly wrote to James Ross that Inglefield had sailed “into the Polar Basin as far as 78½ N where he saw all open sea”.3

While reports such as Inglefield’s claimed that an open polar sea was a possibility, skeptics doubted the reality of such a phenomenon. Historians have generally sided with the skeptics and their views fall into two categories. On one side are those who see the open polar sea as a romantic fantasy, an imaginary place created by “wishful geographical thinking” or just plain bad science (Tuan 1995, p. 142). William Goetzmann has viewed the theory as a “fatal chimera”, that explorers only “knew in their imaginations was there” (Goetzmann 1986, p. 362). Constance Martin portrays it as a quaint relic of the romantic age, “a heavenly abode . . . a golden secret world”. The legend that drove the search for this mythical realm “played as strong a role in government decisions as in the fanciful fiction of Mary Shelley or Elizabeth Gaskell. Theories ingrained by centuries of stories by returning mariners or armchair explorers, became 1 Inglefield to Franklin, 10 November 1852 (Scott Polar Research Institute MS 2481 428/5). 2 Inglefield to Barrow, 14 September 1852 (British Library Additional MS 35306 fol. 204r–v). 3 Beaufort to Ross, 11 November 1852 (National Archives BJ2/3).

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official plans” (Martin 1988, pp. 43, 47). Similarly, David Chapin links the theory of the open polar sea to contemporary pseudo-science like mesmerism and clairvoyance. “[I]t had more speculative potential than scientific data to support it, and it crossed the line in its appeal from enlightened savants to a popular culture of sensationalism” (Chapin 2004, p. 70).

On the other side are historians who see the open polar sea more as the result of ignorance than delusion. Like C. Ian Jackson, they are willing to accept that there was nothing fundamentally impossible about the theory, arguing rather that there was insufficient evidence for nineteenth century explorers to make an informed decision. “The possibility of an ‘open polar sea’ was alive and well at the time: if there was no land near the pole, there seemed to be good arguments that there might also be little ice there” (Jackson 2007, p. 3). “Given the limited amount of knowledge about the polar regions which was available to Arctic explorers,” concludes Oscar Villarejo, it was not surprising that advocates of the open polar sea “should have been victimized by the fallacious theory” (Villarejo 1965, p. 53). John Wright also claims that the theory of an open polar sea owed more to uncertainty about the Arctic ice limit than wishful thinking. Annual shifts in the Arctic ice pack meant that the sea could be clear one year and blocked the next. “Had it not been for these shifts . . . the impenetrability of the pack ice would have been established much earlier and the belief that open water lay to the north might have died in infancy” (Wright 1953, p. 343).

These arguments largely omit the contemporary scientific context in which the theory of the open polar sea developed its final form. As Michael Robinson argues, “the open polar sea theory is an idea that reflects the influences of its culture as well as the phenomena of nature” (Robinson 2006, p. 25). By the early nineteenth century, the idea of a transcendental unity behind all of the phenomena in the natural world had become popular. German philosophers like Friedrich Schelling developed unifying concepts such as Naturphilosophie, the belief that “one and the same principle” was at work in both organic and inorganic sciences while Alexander von Humboldt maintained that everything in nature was interconnected (Morgan 1990, p. 32). This unified view of nature influenced many of the scientists of the age. Hans Christian Oersted’s discovery of electromagnetism has been called “a direct consequence of his metaphysical belief in the unity of all natural forces” stemming from the influence of Kant and Schelling on his work (Snelders 1990, p. 238).4 Similarly, Thomas Kuhn argues that the simultaneous discovery of the concept of conservation of energy was in part influenced by a pre-existing tendency to see a single unifying principle in nature inspired by romantic views of science (Kuhn 1969, p. 338).

The theory of an open polar sea fit into this unified view of nature in the nineteenth century. During the 1820s and 1830s, scientific research into the connection between electricity, magnetism, light and heat began to provide a foundation that supported the various empirical claims of an open polar sea. Contemporary British scientists combined the phenomena of geomagnetism and meteorology to argue that the strength of the geomagnetic field and the mean temperature of a place were fundamentally linked. Using the work of Oersted, Humboldt and Hansteen, David Brewster connected these different phenomena into a unified theory in the 1820s, arguing that the mean temperature of the Arctic would make it unlikely for the sea to freeze, hence creating a space for an open polar sea within the interconnected natural world of electricity, magnetism and meteorology. Further research by Samuel Hunter Christie and Peter Barlow only served to reinforce this belief. Far from the product of self-delusion or ignorance, the theory of the open polar sea represented the British acceptance of contemporary Romantic ideas of a unified view of the phenomena of the natural world.

4 See Caneva’s argument that Naturphilosophie sought to describe unity in the phenomena of nature as dual parts

of an opposing principle rather than a notion of convertible forces (Caneva 1997, pp. 40–41).

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2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND By the early nineteenth century there was a great deal of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory of an open polar sea.5 In the late eighteenth century, Daines Barrington (1727–1800) had compiled a list of numerous sailors who claimed to have reached latitudes in excess of 80° N. In addition, he argued that because the same species of whales were found in the northern Pacific and northern Atlantic Oceans, they must have migrated across the Arctic. In some instances, harpoons from European ships were found in whales killed in the Pacific, indicating that they had made this journey. Since whales needed to surface periodically, there must have been an open sea for them to pass through (Barrington 1818, p. 50). Tides and currents also supported the idea of an open sea in the Arctic region. The combination of a current through Bering Strait and the lack of significant tides led John Barrow (1764–1848) to posit that the water was free to move into an open sea to the north (Barrow 1818a, pp. 436, 444; Barrow 1823b, p. 265).6 Similarly, the rapid tide through the Fury and Hecla Strait implied an exit from the open sea (Barrow 1823b, p. 270).

Advocates of an open polar sea advanced various theories to explain its existence. Some claimed that the longer summer days at high latitudes or the intensity of the Sun (combined with the flattening of the Earth at the poles) would result in a warmer climate (MacDonald 1826, p. 121; Davis 1880, pp. 215–6). The summer sun would melt the Arctic ice that formed each winter and keep the polar sea open (Barrow 1816, p. 170). Another theory maintained that the depth and motion of the ocean waters would prevent them from ever freezing (Barrow 1818a, p. 451). Rising warm water could also prevent the surface of the sea from freezing over (Barrow 1818a, p. 453). Others suggested that the flow of warm ocean currents into the Arctic from the Pacific or the Atlantic would prevent the sea from freezing (Cochrane 1824, p. 551; Maury 1855, p. 164). Additionally, since saltier sea water froze at a lower temperature than fresh water, Arctic ice was more likely to form near land, where rivers diluted the ocean’s salinity. As a result, the farther north one traveled, the less likely it would be to encounter sea ice, providing there was no land mass in the Arctic (Barrington 1818, p. 35). The open polar sea was more an article of faith than a matter of fact, however, leading to some rather circular arguments in its favor.7

The idea of an open polar sea dated back at least to the Middle Ages. Gerardus Mercator’s 1577 summary of the Inventio fortunata (originally written in the fourteenth century) provided evidence for the medieval belief in an open polar sea (Taylor 1956). British interest in navigating this supposed body of water came as part of the search for a shorter passage to Asia and often combined with attempts to find a Northwest or Northeast Passage to the East Indies. In 1527, Robert Thorne proposed a voyage to the Moluccas via the North Pole to King Henry VIII. “[T]here is no doubt, but sailing northward and passing the Pole . . . we shall hit these islands, and it should be a much shorter way, than either the Spaniards or the Portuguese have” (Hakluyt 1972, p. 50) The Tudor explorer John Davis maintained that “it is well known that the sea never fryseth” and that the North Pole could be reached by sea, at least in the summer (Davis 1880, pp. 217, 222). In 1607, Henry Hudson went on a voyage to the North Pole, reaching a latitude of 80° 23’ N (Purchas 1625, Vol. 13, p. 304). A few years later, Jonas Poole went out to discover the “North-Pole, for the likelihood of a Trade or a passage” (Purchas 1625, Vol. 14, p. 1). While Poole only reached 79° 50’ N in 1610, he went out again in 1611 with instructions “to discover further to the North Pole as farre as possibly you can . . . and whether there be an open Sea to the Northward” (Purchas 1625, Vol. 14, p. 25).

5 For a survey of the various arguments in favor of an open polar sea, see Wright 1953, pp. 346–362. 6 While articles in the Quarterly Review were anonymous, their authorship was something of an open secret. An

1844 letter in Gentleman’s Magazine identified Barrow as the author of a series of articles on the Arctic (T. P. 1844).

7 “If, therefore, we have an open sea to the northward of the arctic circle”, asserted Barrow, “the existence of an open sea at the pole is not improbable, provided it be free from land”. In short, if there is an open polar sea, then there is an open polar sea (Barrow 1818a, p. 452).

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Daines Barrington revived the idea of sailing to the North Pole in the eighteenth century (Williams 1962, p. 163). In 1773, Barrington proposed a polar expedition to the Council of the Royal Society. Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, shared Barrington’s interest in Arctic exploration, as did Lord Sandwich at the Admiralty (Gascoigne 1998, p. 39). The result of their lobbying was a polar expedition under Constantine Phipps. Unfortunately, Phipps failed to sail any farther north than Spitsbergen due to the heavy sea ice (Savours 1984). Undeterred, Barrington continued to press for another Arctic expedition. He admitted, however, that the Royal Society was unequal to the task due to the great expense involved and appealed to the Admiralty for assistance. Lord Sandwich, however, was unwilling to back this expedition even with the support of the Royal Society behind it.8 In response, Barrington made an appeal to nationalism. If another country were to successfully navigate the polar sea before Britain, “would it be to the credit of the English to abandon an enterprize which they had taken the lead in?”9 By 1775, the Admiralty had come to support the idea of an expedition to find the Northwest Passage, but still showed unease at the prospect of a voyage to the North Pole. That year, Parliament debated a bill to offer a £20,000 reward for any private ship that found a Northwest Passage. A similar reward for reaching the North Pole met strong resistance from the Admiralty though.10 In the end, Parliament offered an award of only £5,000 for sailing to the North Pole in an attempt to encourage private whaling vessels to undertake Arctic exploration in the hopes of finding a navigable passage and a substantial bounty.11 Few private ships, however, were willing to risk the Arctic waters even for such a prize.

At the same time, state sponsored expeditions also declined. From 1775 until 1815, Britain was almost constantly at war, first with the American colonies and then with France. With the Royal Navy fully engaged in hostilities, there were no spare ships for exploration. Just as the war discouraged exploring, however, the return of peace in 1815 provided a new stimulus to Arctic voyages. Even after decommissioning thousands of sailors, the Royal Navy found that it still had surplus ships that needed work (Fleming 1998, p. 2; Jackson 2007, p. 10). One possibility was to return to the Arctic in search of the elusive passage to Asia.

Fortuitously, the early decades of the nineteenth century also seemed to be milder than previous years. This period corresponds to the end of the climatic phenomenon known as the Little Ice Age, which had cooled temperatures in Europe since the sixteenth century. One result of the more temperate climate was the break up of Arctic ice and a corresponding increase in icebergs seen farther south. Paradoxically, it also led to a drop in temperatures in Europe and North America even as the Arctic warmed (Barrow 1817, pp. 205–206). Already in 1806, John Liang had reached a latitude of 81° 50’ N near Spitsbergen where he found clear seas and no apparent barrier that would “have prevented us from going a good way farther to the north” (Liang 1825, p. 102). In April 1813, the whaler William Scoresby (1789–1857) had found that he was able to reach a latitude of 79° N without encountering any of the usual barrier ice. This free navigation so far north at so early a period of the year he designated an “open season”, one that was also unfortunately poor for whaling (Jackson 2003, Vol. 1, pp. 155–156). Scoresby found that 1814 and 1815 were also “open” seasons, allowing easy navigation as far north as 80° N but affording fewer whales and serious financial losses.12 “The remarkable continuance of fine and mild weather is at this season of the year almost without precedent”, Scoresby recorded in his journal in 1815. “The ice to the Northward as hitherto an open pack of light ice [is] to the northward navigable to an unseen extent” (Jackson 2003, Vol. 2, p. 154).

Joseph Banks (1743–1820) had also noticed the milder climate in recent years, resulting in more icebergs and flooding in mountainous parts of Europe. In 1817, he wrote to Scoresby, asking him to describe “Such particulars as you have Observed Relative to the decrease of the

8 Sandwich to Barrington, 12 March 1774 (National Maritime Museum SAN F/36/11. 9 Barrington to Sandwich, 22 September 1774 National Maritime Museum SAN F/36/15. 10 Barrington to Sandwich, 15 May 1775 (National Maritime Museum SAN F/36/18. 11 Barrington to Sandwich, 20 November 1775 (National Maritime Museum SAN F/36/21. 12 More ice cover limited the areas where whales could surface and thus increased the chances of whalers being

able to spot them. Warm, open water made it less likely for a ship to encounter whales.

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Polar Ice”.13 Scoresby replied that he had seen “two thousand square leagues of the surface of the Greenland seas, included between the parallels 74° and 80°, perfectly void of ice, all of which disappeared within the last two years” (Barrow 1817, p. 202; Jackson 2003, Vol. 3, p. 46). This report led Banks to write to Lord Melville at the Admiralty, suggesting that the time was right for another Arctic expedition. Banks cited the “considerable change of climate . . . in the circumpolar regions by which the severity of the cold, that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice, has . . . greatly abated.” This evidence provided “ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened, and give us hope that the Arctic seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past”. He proposed that the Admiralty send ships to investigate a number of points, including an attempt to circumnavigate Greenland, explore Baffin Bay and search for a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific via the Arctic.14

John Barrow also favored a new Arctic expedition. Barrow held several tenets about the Arctic for most of his life. First, he believed that Greenland was an island and not an extension of North America. A corollary to this postulate was his belief that Baffin Bay was not a bay but rather a sea with passages leading out of it to the north and west. Finally, he believed in an open polar sea (Jackson 2007, pp. 14–17). In 1816, he had penned an article in the Quarterly Review, pointing out that “not one iota of additional information of the northern parts has been received for the last sixty years” and suggesting a voyage to Davis Strait and Baffin Bay (Barrow 1816, p. 172). In 1817, he picked up on Scoresby’s report of the disappearance of barrier ice and “the facility it offers of correcting the very defective geography of the arctic regions in our western hemisphere; of attempting the circumnavigation of Greenland, a direct passage over the pole, and the more circuitous one along the northern coast of America, into the Pacific” (Barrow 1817, p. 204). Most important for Barrow was the determination of the existence of an open polar sea. The appearance of driftwood in the northern seas had convinced him that there had to be open water for it to float across and an opening through Smith Sound into this sea. Thus Barrow denied that Baffin Bay was a bay at all, claiming that “there must exist a free and open passage between this [polar] basin and Davis’s Strait” (Barrow 1817, p. 212).

In response to this new opportunity for exploration, the Royal Navy sent out two expeditions in 1818, one towards the North Pole and the other to Baffin Bay. Silliman’s American Journal of Science greeted the prospect of these new voyages with enthusiasm. “The scientific, as well as the commercial world, will wait with no small impatience for the termination of the two grand arctic expeditions, which are among the most original and daring, and may be among the most interesting and momentous hitherto undertaken by man” (Anonymous 1819c, p. 104). Unfortunately, the polar expedition under David Buchan, like Phipps, failed to sail any farther than Spitsbergen due to heavy ice. The other ships, under John Ross, sailed around Baffin Bay but failed to discover any outlet from that body of water, finding the potential passages through Smith and Lancaster Sounds apparently blocked by ice or land. The expeditions returned to Britain having accomplished little to further the goal of sailing an open polar sea or reaching the Pacific via it.

3. THEORIES OF TEMPERATURE

The disappointment of the 1818 voyages led to frustration and recriminations. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine lamented that “both politics and physics had been arrayed against them” (Anonymous 1818, p. 188). In an anonymous letter to The Monthly Magazine, the author called the expeditions “complete failures”. Ross’s confirmation that Baffin Bay was in fact merely a bay had added nothing to the stock of geographical knowledge of the Arctic as “the whole amount of his discovery was as well known a hundred and fifty years ago as it is at this moment” (G. B. 1819, p. 193). The primary fault was the Admiralty’s presumption, endorsed by

13 Banks to Scoresby, 22 September 1817 (Chambers 2000, p. 329). 14 Banks to Melville, 20 November 1817 (Chambers 2000, pp. 334–335).

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Barrow in the Quarterly Review, that there was in fact an open polar sea. The author demanded to know “on what authority of fact or experience the Admiralty thought that the sea was open to the pole, or rather on what data Messrs. Crocker and Barrow have fancied that the globe of the earth must present a maritime surface at the pole” (G. B. 1819, p. 194). Even Barrow conceded “the total failure of the two Expeditions which had so much excited the attention of Europe,” although his belief in an open polar sea was still intact (Barrow 1819, p. 213). Barrow directed the brunt of his criticism at Ross. “[O]ur conviction of the existence of a communication between Baffin’s Bay and the Polar Sea, and between that and the Pacific, so far from being in the smallest degree shaken by any thing that Captain Ross has done, is considerably strengthened by what he omitted to do” (Barrow 1819, p. 214). In Barrow’s opinion, Ross had stopped short of success and missed numerous opportunities to explore Smith and Lancaster Sounds. In the end, all Ross could really claim was that he “does not know that there is not a passage through Sir James Lancaster’s Sound; he knows no more, in fact, than he might have known by staying at home” (Barrow 1819, p. 251). The Edinburgh Philosophical Journal was more charitable in its review of events, holding that Ross had “added greatly to our geographical knowledge of the Arctic regions” but still maintaining that the question of a Northwest Passage was far from settled (Anonymous 1819a, p. 158).

While Barrow was already pushing for another expedition to Lancaster Sound in 1819, the issue of an open polar sea was still unresolved. Regardless of hopes to the contrary, Arctic expeditions invariably had to turn back when they reached an icy barrier. It seemed that a latitude of 81° was the furthest north any ship could practically sail before reaching this ice (Anonymous 1830, p. 3). Thus advocates of an open polar sea were faced with a difficult question: Why should the water around the pole be clear of ice when the waters farther south obviously were not? Based on his meteorological observations, Scoresby held that the mean temperature at the pole would be too cold to allow for an open polar sea, which he declared a “chimerical” notion (Scoresby 1820, pp. 46, 49). He regarded “the probability of exploring the regions more immediately in the vicinity of the pole than has yet been accomplished or even of reaching the pole itself” as “the frenzied speculation of a disordered fancy” (Scoresby 1818, p. 328).

Indeed, the conventional wisdom maintained that temperatures should drop as one went farther north, regardless of the lengthier summer days in the high Arctic. This had been a basic assumption in the eighteenth century, when the German astronomer Tobias Mayer had tried to derive a formula that would give the average temperature at any point on the Earth’s surface. By comparing those temperature readings available to him, he had directly linked the mean temperature of a place to its latitude through the formula:

T = 84° – 52°sin2 L (°F)

This made T fall to its minimum at a latitude of 90°, or at the North Pole.15 Similarly, in the nineteenth century, the Frenchman Daubuisson had suggested the formula:

T = 27°cos2 L (°C)

Once again, the mean temperature linked directly to latitude, with the minimum at the North Pole.16

In 1820, however, David Brewster (1781–1868) set out to re-examine these calculations. Recent readings taken in the Arctic by Scoresby and others indicated that Mayer’s formula, which calculated a mean temperature of 32° F for the North Pole, gave results that were far too high. For example, Scoresby had found the mean temperature at latitude 78° N to be around 17° 15 Where T was the mean temperature (Fahrenheit) and L the latitude (Mayer 1775, Vol. 1, pp. 3–10; Harvey 1834,

p. 40). 16 While Mayer had used the Fahrenheit scale, Daubuisson used the centigrade scale (Daubuisson 1819, Vol. 1, p.

429; Harvey 1834, p. 41).

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F, while Mayer’s formula gave a predicted average of just over 34° F at that point (Brewster 1823, p. 207). Although Brewster felt that Mayer’s formula was inaccurate, he nevertheless accepted its basic premise that “the mean heat of any place was well represented by the radius of its parallel of latitude,” or that temperature dropped as one went farther north (Brewster 1823, p. 204). In his February 1820 address to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Brewster proposed a new formula to correct Mayer’s:

T = 81½°cos L (°F)

As before, the minimum occurred at 90°, where “the temperature of the Pole itself is not far from 0° of Fahrenheit” (Brewster 1823, p. 212).17 This theory also appeared to eliminate any possibility of an open polar sea, as even salt water would freeze at such low temperatures.

By the end of the year, however, Brewster had completely changed his mind. In December 1820, he presented a new paper that argued “the Pole of the Globe is not the coldest point of the Arctic hemisphere, and that there are two points of greatest cold not many degrees from the Pole” (Brewster 1823, p. 214). Brewster’s new theory posited the existence of two isothermal cold poles, located about 10 degrees from the geographic North Pole, that marked the points of global minimal temperature (see Figure 1). To calculate the mean temperature of a point on the Earth’s surface, the formula had to take into account not just the latitude of the place, but its distance from the closest cold pole. Thus, Brewster found that

T = 86.3°sin D – 3½° (°F)

As a result, the coldest temperatures were no longer found at the North Pole, but rather at two points situated in the vicinity of 80° N 95° E (in Siberia) and 80° N 100° W (in northern Canada) (Brewster 1823, p. 214).18

Figure 1. Brewster’s cold poles.

17 Where T was the mean temperature in Fahrenheit and L the latitude. For the New World, Brewster adjusted this

formula to T = 81½°cos2(1.13L) (Brewster 1823, pp. 204, 211). 18 Here T was the mean temperature in Fahrenheit and D represented the distance between a given point and the

nearest cold pole rather than just its latitude (Brewster 1823, p. 215).

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Several elements converged in 1820 that led Brewster to change his mind. New theories about the nature of geomagnetism and the apparent connection between electricity and magnetism inspired the belief that other natural phenomena, such as magnetism and heat, might also be connected. Announcements about these theories and discoveries appeared in the pages of Brewster’s Edinburgh Philosophical Review during the course of 1820, influencing his own thinking about the issues. Ultimately, he was led to connect geomagnetism and meteorology in such a way that he was able to propose that the mean temperature of the Earth might be connected to geomagnetism, once again making the open polar sea a possibility.

The first factor that contributed to Brewster’s theory was the publication of Christopher Hansteen’s (1784–1873) work on the Earth’s magnetic field in 1819 (Hansteen 1819). A review of Hansteen’s book appeared in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal in July 1820, midway between Brewster’s two addresses to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Hansteen had revived Edmund Halley’s theory that there were four magnetic poles of the Earth, two in each hemisphere (Anonymous 1820, p. 125). The two northern poles explained the variation of the compass needle away from geographic north as well as the horizontal inclination of a suspended needle. Hansteen remarked on the coincidence of higher magnetic intensity and colder temperatures in the Arctic, as well as the more frequent occurrence of aurora in this region. He also speculated on the relationship between the diurnal and annual variations in geomagnetism and the heating produced by the Sun (Good 1991, p. 161). Hansteen believed that the two northern magnetic poles were located in Canada and Siberia, in close proximity to Brewster’s predicted cold poles. Indeed, Brewster commented that: “it would be to overstep the limits of philosophical caution, to maintain that they have no other connection but that of accidental locality” (Brewster 1823, p. 223). The article also commented on the apparent relationship of different natural phenomena. “The connection of meteorology with the aurora borealis, and, consequently, with the magnetic forces, is perfectly clear: the similarity between Humboldt’s isothermal lines and the lines of the same magnetic dip, is equally striking” (Anonymous 1820, p. 127).

Alexander von Humboldt’s (1769–1859) work on isograms also influenced Brewster. Humboldt had developed a method to graphically display phenomena such as temperatures on the surface of the Earth by connecting points with the same value through lines on a map, similar to Halley’s map of magnetic variation (Halley 1702, Humboldt 1817). In July 1820, an English translation of Humboldt’s article appeared in the Edinburgh Philosophical Review. Humboldt used the technique to connect points of the same mean temperature through isothermal lines to give a graphical representation of the Earth’s climate “analogous to the magnetic lines of dip and variation” (Humboldt 1820, p. 14). Although Humboldt did not imply that there was a direct connection between temperature and magnetism, he repeatedly emphasized the similarity in the way the two phenomena could be studied.

A correlation between heat and magnetism did not seem so impossible, however, given Hans Christian Oersted’s (1777–1851) recent link of electricity and magnetism. He announced his discovery in July 1820, the same month that the review of Hansteen’s work and the translation of Humboldt’s article appeared (Snelders 1990, p. 228). Oersted found that a current carrying wire would cause a deflection in a magnetic needle if brought near to it. The deflection varied depending on the relative position of the needle and the wire. This implied that the electrical current created a circular magnetic field around the wire (Oersted 1820, pp. 274–276). If two apparently discrete phenomena could actually represent two aspects of the same force, was it so unlikely that heat might also be a component? Oersted himself had earlier linked heat and light to electricity (Oersted 1820, p. 276). Now, Brewster wondered if the magnetic poles of the globe “may have their operations accompanied with the production of cold” (Brewster 1823, p. 225).

Brewster found support for his new theory from early reports from the follow up to Ross’s 1818 failure. In 1819–1820, a new expedition under William Edward Parry (1790–1855) had set out to explore Lancaster Sound and found that it did indeed open to the west. The expedition had been able to sail down what is now Parry Channel to a point 113° 46' W, farther

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than any earlier attempt had reached (Barrow 1821, p. 195). Parry reported that he and his crew began “to flatter ourselves that we had fairly entered the Polar Sea” (Barrow 1821, p. 180). Sailing along the channel, Captain Edward Sabine had noticed a change in the compass. At some point between 91° 48' W and 103° 44' W the variation of the compass (the amount it differed from geographic north) had changed direction from west to east (Parry 1821, p. 62). This implied that Parry had sailed past the magnetic pole, which lay somewhere around 95–100° W. The crew spent the winter in the vicinity of the magnetic pole, where the temperature never rose above 17½°F (Sabine 1821, p. 358). Brewster positioned one of his cold poles near the same point and went on to suggest that according to his new formula, the temperature at the North Pole would be “incomparably warmer than the regions in which Captain Parry spent the winter” (Brewster 1823, p. 222). This reopened the possibility of an open polar sea that would allow them to reach the North Pole itself; if Parry and his crew could survive the winter near the cold pole, then “those individuals who sustained the rigorous cold of Lancaster Sound, could experience no hardship under a comparatively milder climate” (Brewster 1823, p. 223).

Barrow was quick to seize upon Brewster’s claims to support his own theory of an open polar sea. “The recent discoveries of the connection between electricity and magnetism, and the meteorological phenomena observed by Captain Parry, had suggested . . . the probability of the two poles of greatest cold being the two magnetic poles” (Barrow 1821, p. 198). Brewster’s argument also reinforced ideas that Barrow had nurtured for years. In 1817, Barrow had claimed that there might be a link between temperature and magnetic variation (Barrow 1817, pp. 203–4). Barrow had also asserted that it was warmer near the pole in his 1818 work on the Arctic (Barrow 1818a, pp. 454–5). While Brewster merely suggested that the polar sea might be open, Barrow saw his work as a confirmation of the potential that an open sea lay to the north and west of Parry’s last position in the Arctic. “These facts tend to corroborate the very general opinion which . . . has been entertained of the probability, at least of the possibility, of an open sea at the North Pole” (Barrow 1821, p. 208). Barrow could now echo Davis in his claim that “the deep sea freezeth not” (Barrow 1823a, p. 407). Robert Jameson concurred that “the way to the Polar Sea has been discovered” (Jameson 1821, p. 155). Barrow’s beliefs about the Arctic appeared to have been confirmed.

4. FURTHER RESEARCH In the years after Brewster’s cold pole theory appeared, a number of British scientists expanded the research being done on the continent into electromagnetic and thermomagnetic effects. This work tended to reinforce Brewster’s concept of geomagnetism as being connected directly to temperature. It had already been determined that heat could cause magnets to lose their magnetism. If higher temperatures resulted in weaker magnets, and if the Earth itself acted as a giant magnet, it did not seem unlikely that warmer climates would result in weaker magnetic effects and vice versa (Christie 1823, pp. 389–90). Brewster’s poles could thus represent both the points of lowest temperature and highest magnetic strength. As scientists connected the different phenomena of electricity, magnetism and heat, they believed that they were coming closer to explaining the Earth’s magnetism in terms of temperature and therefore uniting geomagnetism and meteorology just as Oersted had unified electricity and magnetism.

Oersted’s discovery opened up a new field of research into electromagnetism and its related fields. Efforts to find similar connections to heat and light were already underway. Based on the distribution of magnetism in a New Jersey iron mine, Colonel George Gibbs suggested that the source of magnetism lay in light, and that the increased refraction of light in the polar regions could explain the attraction of the compass needle (Gibbs 1819, pp. 89–90). In Italy, Domenico Morichini had demonstrated an apparent connection between light and magnetism by using the violet rays of the solar spectrum to magnetize a needle. “This effect was so distinctly marked, as to leave no doubt in the minds of any who were present, that the needle had received its magnetism from the action of the violet rays” (Anonymous 1819b, p. 241). Experiments performed by the Scottish polymath Mary Somerville (1780–1872) in England seemed to

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confirm this result. In less than two hours, she was able to magnetize a needle by exposing one end of it to violet light while keeping the other end covered (Somerville 1826, p. 133). Riess and Moser, however, were unable to replicate this phenomenon (Riess and Moser 1830, pp. 225–229).Following Oersted’s connection of electricity and magnetism, the German physicist Thomas Seebeck (1770–1831) discovered a link between heat and electromagnetism.19 Seebeck noted that a rise in temperature appeared to induce magnetism in a circuit. Experiments led him to conclude that a temperature gradient across the points of contact in the circuit created this magnetic effect (Seebeck 1822/1823, p. 273). James Cumming (1777–1861), a British chemist, repeated Seebeck’s experiment at Cambridge in 1823, finding that “electro-magnetism may be excited by the unequal distribution of heat” (Cumming 1827, p. 50). Cumming realized that this new discovery might explain the phenomenon of the diurnal variation of the compass needle. First noted in the eighteenth century, the diurnal variation was a slight daily change in the variation of a horizontally suspended needle (Barlow 1823, p. 326). Despite numerous observations, no satisfactory explanation for this phenomenon had arisen. Now Cumming speculated that the Sun’s heat might give the solution. “Is it improbable that the diurnal variation of the needle, which follows the course of the Sun, and therefore seems to depend upon heat, may result from the metals and other substances which compose the surface of the earth, being unequally heated, and consequently suffering a change in their magnetic influence” (Cumming 1827, p. 64)? Similarly, Peter Barlow (1776–1862) had hypothesized that the Sun’s light could be “the principal operative agent in producing the daily variation” of the compass (Barlow 1823, p. 340).

Thomas Traill (1781–1862), a physician and friend of Scoresby, was thinking along similar lines to Cumming in Scotland. He repeated Seebeck’s experiments in 1824 but went farther than Cumming in his conclusion, holding that the uneven heating of the Earth’s surface by the Sun had converted the entire planet “into a vast thermo-magnetic apparatus” (Traill 1824, p. 262). The variation in the compass needle could then be connected to changes in temperature as the Sun rose and set. Traill even suggested that geomagnetism itself was influenced by solar heat. “The unequal distribution of the Earth’s temperature must have some effect of modifying its ‘magnetism of composition’” (Traill 1824, p. 262). Hansteen also wondered whether the Sun’s heating of the Earth could produce a “magnetic tension” and if the change of the Earth’s axis in its orbit might account for the apparent change in the position of the magnetic poles over the years (Hansteen 1826, p. 70).

A series of articles by Samuel Hunter Christie (1784–1865) and Barlow investigated the idea that the uneven heating of the Sun on the Earth’s two hemispheres might be responsible for the various phenomena of geomagnetism. Christie began with the issue of diurnal variation. His research showed that a magnet’s intensity could be effected by its temperature: higher temperatures lowered it while lower temperatures increased it. Heating the magnet above 100° F resulted in a permanent reduction of its magnetic power (Christie 1825, pp. 62–63). He also found that light from the Sun could have a negative effect on a magnetic needle independent of solar heat. These results implied that the Sun could have a significant impact on terrestrial magnetism (Christie 1826, pp. 230–231). Barlow summarized the argument in 1827. First, he held that the Earth’s magnetism had been induced by some kind of external force. Second, he cited Seebeck’s work on thermoelectricity to show that the uneven heating of a body would create electromagnetic effects. Finally, he asserted that geomagnetic phenomena could be due to the Sun’s uneven heating of the Earth’s surface (Barlow 1827, p. 364). Thus the Sun, by its heating of the Earth, could create geomagnetism and its associated phenomena.

Christie put this theory to the test by trying to replicate the Sun’s action on a two-dimensional model to study the effect that the Sun’s heat could have on terrestrial magnetism. If Seebeck had found a thermomagnetic effect in a circuit, would the same be true for a planet? Christie used a bismuth plate twelve inches in diameter, surrounded by a ring of copper one inch

19 Although Seebeck’s discovery is known as the thermoelectric effect, Seebeck himself always maintained that it

was a purely thermomagnetic phenomenon (Nielsen 1991, p. 382).

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thick to simulate the Earth and its atmosphere. He then experimented with heating different parts of the plate and using a magnetized needle to determine if any magnetism was present in the plate. He found that heating one side of the plate would create a magnetic pole on the other side that would either attract or repel the needle. Moving the heat source created other poles (Christie 1827, p. 319). He determined that the needle acted as if there were four stationary poles in the plate, two on each side (Christie 1827, p. 321). Christie believed that the application of heat had created currents within the plate. He concluded that “when heat was applied to a point in the copper ring, the characters of the deviations of the needle . . . were such as would arise from a polarising of the plate in lines nearly at right angles to the axis of heat . . . contrary poles being opposite to each other in the two surfaces” (Christie 1827, p. 326). Taking this experiment as a representation of the Earth and its atmosphere, “any portion of the earth . . . would become similarly polarized, if one part were more heated than another. Thus, considering alone the equatorial regions of the earth, we should have two magnetic poles on the northern side, and on the southern side two poles similarly posited” (Christie 1827, p. 327). Christie regretted not being able to perform the experiment with a globe rather than a disk, but felt that he had successfully linked heat and magnetism, demonstrating that the heating of the Earth could result in magnetic effects that would create four magnetic poles, just as Hansteen had suggested.

Thus by 1830, there seemed to be a considerable quantity of empirical and theoretical evidence supporting the possible existence of an open polar sea. Beyond the claims of sailors, scientists had now been able to link natural phenomena together in a way that allowed the Arctic to be warm enough to prevent the sea from freezing over. Just as electricity and magnetism were now viewed as part of the same natural phenomenon, heat and magnetism could be unified into a single event. Extrapolating from experiments with magnets in a lab, scientists were able to describe the effect heat could have on the global magnet. Christie had even been able to replicate a thermomagnetic effect that predicted four magnetic poles in accordance with the prevailing geomagnetic theory. If heat and magnetism were inversely related, then the lower temperatures of the Arctic would lead to stronger magnetism. Since the magnetic pole was displaced from the geographic pole, the coldest point (and the point of highest magnetic intensity) would be away from the North Pole, allowing for an open polar sea.

Discontinuities and disagreements had already begun however. In 1826, Pierre Prévost had suggested that while the original source of geomagnetism was the Sun, the excess of heat in one hemisphere would cause geomagnetism to increase rather than decrease there (Prévost 1826, p. 291). Barlow developed his own theory following this argument, suggesting that “an increased magnetic action” would occur “in those parts of the earth immediately exposed to the solar influence” (Barlow 1827, p. 143). Barlow compared readings of magnetic intensity taken by Captains Foster and Sabine with Thomas Young’s formula for magnetic intensity. He found that Young’s formula was defective because it assumed a constant temperature across the surface of the globe. In fact, northern readings tended to be lower than predicted while the intensity farther south was higher (Barlow 1827, p. 147) (see Figure 2). This difference Barlow attributed to the effect of the temperature on geomagnetism, concluding that “the solar rays have a positive influence on the magnetism of the terrestrial sphere” (Barlow 1827, p. 146). This conclusion was the opposite of Brewster’s.

Empirical evidence challenged the theory as well. As early as 1827, Humboldt had asserted that: “the coldest points of the earth, which have lately been improperly called the Poles of Cold, do not coincide with the magnetic poles” (Humboldt 1827, p. 343). In the 1830s, Richard King pointed out that colder temperatures had been found away from the magnetic poles, challenging their position as cold poles. Some

had concluded that the most intense cold was not in the vicinity of the North Pole . . . They had even gone so far as to hazard an opinion, that around the North Pole a pool of open water would be found. Unfortunately, however, for these theorists, the observations taken at Fort Reliance, instead of showing a warmer temperature than those registered by

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Ross [at the magnetic pole], a far greater cold was experienced at a far greater distance from that source of attraction (King 1836, Vol. 2, pp. 99–100).

Figure 2. Observed vs Predicted Magnetic Intensity.

Colder temperatures away from the magnetic pole did not conform with a theory that linked temperature and geomagnetism. Eventually Robert McClure (1807–1873), the first explorer to transit the Northwest Passage, dismissed any notion of an open polar sea, declaring “I am fully persuaded that it never does, or ever can” exist.20 The eighth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, edited by Traill, concluded that “winter cold increases with the latitude” and suggested that observations of Arctic temperatures tended to disprove the existence of open water there (Anonymous 1859, p. 178). The open polar sea now threatened to disappear beneath the Arctic ice once again.

Nonetheless, advocates of the open polar sea still found reason to maintain their position. Brewster continued to refine his temperature formula without dropping the idea of the cold poles. In 1831, he reprinted his 1820 article almost verbatim (Brewster 1831a). Later in 1831, he proposed a modified version of his formula in a letter to Humboldt in the Annalen der Physik, which he held even better conformed to the observations made by Hansteen and Sabine (Brewster 1831b, p. 325). The Edinburgh Encyclopedia entry on “Polar Regions”, edited by Brewster, continued to argue that “the centres of greatest cold [were] also precisely the centres of greatest attraction”, in the Arctic (Anonymous 1830, p. 15). The entry on “Variation of the Needle” asserted “that the magnetism of the earth is related to its temperature” as confirmed by Brewster’s “observations, that the temperature of our globe is related to two poles of maximum cold distant from the poles of rotation, and related in position to the magnetic poles” (Anonymous 1832, pp. 155–156). Similarly the Scottish physicist James Forbes (1809–1868) adopted the cold pole theory in his “Report upon the recent progress and present state of meteorology” for the British Association for the Advancement of Science while Christie also

20 McClure to Ross, 15 April 1853 (National Archives BJ2/10).

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repeated his conclusions in his ‘Report on the state of our knowledge respecting the magnetism of the Earth” (Forbes 1832, p. 215; Christie 1833, pp. 113–114).

Increasingly, however, arguments in favor of an open polar sea tended to rely upon empirical evidence such as the claims of navigators who had sailed to the high latitudes. Parry had found open sea up to 81° 34' N in 1827 during an attempt to reach the North Pole, leading Frederick Beechey (1796–1856), who had explored Bering Strait at the same time, to suggest that there was no reason a ship should not be able to reach the vicinity of the Pole (Parry 1828, p. 118; Beechey 1843, p. 211). In the 1820s, the Russian explorer Ferdinand von Wrangell (1797–1870) had traveled along the northern coast of Siberia, where he found an opening in the ice above the New Siberian Islands, which he termed a polynia—“the part of the Polar Ocean which is always an open sea” (Wrangell 1840, p. 396). It was the search for John Franklin’s lost expedition in the 1850s, however, which truly reinvigorated the belief in an open polar sea (Robinson 2006, p. 18). Lieutenant Sherard Osborn (1822–1875) maintained that “a northern sea, an open water, must have been close” to his position in 1850 and that Franklin had “steered to that open sea, which, whether limited or encircling the Pole, it was his object to enter” (Osborn 1852, p. 208). The idea that Franklin might have found his way into an open polar sea inspired numerous voyages, including Inglefield’s (Inglefield 1852). In 1852, Erasmus Ommanney (1814–1904) wrote to James Ross, suggesting that the time was right for a new Arctic expedition to confirm the existence of Wrangell’s polynia.21 Roderick Murchison called for a new push to the Arctic to find the “vast and comparatively open sea to the north” in 1853 (Murchison 1853, p. lxxvii). Admiralty maps of the 1850s identified an “Open Polar Sea” opposite Lady Franklin Bay at a latitude of 82° N (Admiralty 1856). The Scottish geologist Peter Sutherland (1822–1900) even revived Brewster’s notion of a colder climate farther south, noting the paradox of open water in the Canadian Arctic at Cape Becher (76 ½° N) while Cape Hurd (74 ½° N) was frozen over (Sutherland 1852, Vol. 2, p. 249).

Americans such as Matthew Maury also picked up the theory, as did the German August Petermann, ensuring that the idea of an open polar sea would not fade away quickly. (Robinson 2006, pp. 21–22). Maury connected the open polar sea to his studies of ocean currents, arguing that there was an under current from the Atlantic through Davis Strait carrying relatively warm water into the polar basin. This influx of warmer water would moderate the climate of the Arctic and create an open polar sea although its position was variable (Maury 1855, pp. 146–149). Petermann became interested in the search for Franklin and in 1852 proposed a new plan to find him. Petermann argued that the open waters seen to the north of Siberia and Canada were in fact part of a single navigable sea and that the best way to enter the polar basin would be to sail north between Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya. Linking his argument to Brewster’s theory, Petermann suggested that there was a mobile cold pole, influenced by the ocean currents. Citing recent British and Russian voyages which had reached latitudes in excess of 80° N, Petermann claimed that there was “a very large Polar Sea, more or less open, and which extends to the north of nearly a half circle from the New Siberian Islands to Spitzbergen” (Petermann 1852, p. 13). By the 1860s, Petermann had developed a hypothesis similar to Maury that the Gulf Stream brought warmer waters into the Arctic, keeping the sea free of ice (Tammiksaar, Sukhova and Stone 1999). In a letter to Murchison, he suggested that ice was limited to a “band of 5 to 10 degrees of latitude in width, beyond which the sea is more or less free of ice . . . . Vessels pushing through this band or barrier, will find a navigable sea in the highest latitudes, and no doubt to the Pole itself” (Petermann 1865b). The polar sea would remain ice free because of counteracting currents. As one carried ice to the south, the other carried the warm waters of the Gulf Stream north (Petermann 1865a, p. 141)

Just as Somerville had argued that light, heat, electricity and magnetism “are so connected, that there is reason to believe they will ultimately be referred to some one power of a higher order” studies into electromagnetism in the nineteenth century slowly unified different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum (Somerville 1846, p. 372). One of the more interesting

21 Ommanney to Ross, 19 August 1852 (National Archives BJ2/10).

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applications of this advance towards natural unity was support for the open polar sea. No longer merely reliant upon contingent claims of sailors and hearsay evidence, the open polar sea enjoyed a brief period of scientific backing thanks to the work of Brewster, Christie and others who sought to combine the phenomena of heat and magnetism. In so doing, they followed the general trend of the age in seeing natural phenomena as part of a single whole. While belief in the open polar sea declined in the late nineteenth century, new ways of studying the Earth on a global scale opened up in fields such as geomagnetism, meteorology and climatology. The claim of a warmer Arctic caused by interlinked global phenomena can still be seen. The early nineteenth century witnessed the first period when natural phenomena were seen as interrelated. This same period saw the connection of electricity and magnetism, the discovery of the impact of solar radiation on the Earth’s magnetic field to create the aurora and the beginnings of an ecological view of the environment and its impact on natural selection and evolution. The open polar sea, flawed as the theory may have been, was but one component in this overall realization that the natural world does not exist in a vacuum, but that apparently discrete phenomena can be connected on a truly global scale.

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